All Rise...

The Charge

The godfathers of hardcore live.

The Case

At the end of the 1970s, a group of filthy punks from Vancouver, British
Columbia, got together under the name D.O.A. and started playing music. They
didn't know it at the time, but singer/guitarist Joey Shithead, drummer Chuck
Biscuits, and bassist Randy Rampage would one day be known as one of the
founders of hardcore punk. Arguably, they coined the term with the release of
their Hardcore '81 album and, thirty years later, they're still going
strong.

D.O.A. To Hell and Back is a celebration of those three decades as
seen over four dates and two years. It starts and ends at the Rickshaw Theater
in Vancouver, while the Palomino Club in Calgary and the Canmore Hotel in
Canmore, Alberta get a few songs each.

Joey's energetic as ever, and while the rest of the band is more or less a
revolving door at this point, they keep up with the old man pretty good. The
shows are fun, the crowd's totally into it, and the music is as solid as it ever
was. Better, really, since Joey's had so much more time to master his guitar
work.

They go through the classics, with "Police Brutality," "Disco
Sucks," and "Nazi Training Camp" being personal favorites.
"That's Why I'm an Athiest," "Race Riot," and "I Live
in a Car" are strong selections, as well, while covers of "War"
and "Taking Care of Business" serving as a fine way to round out the
set. It's fun stuff; D.O.A. fans know what they're getting themselves into with
a concert DVD of the band. Not much has changed with Joey and the gang over the
years and that's just fine by me. If I want to listen to hardcore punk, you
can't get much purer than D.O.A. This is a good series of shows from a classic
band that's still got it, which should serve as recommendation enough for their
fans.

MVD's DVD for D.O.A. To Hell and Back does the job well enough, with
a decent lo-fi image that doesn't feature much detail, but nobody would expect
it to. The stereo sound is a fairly full mix, but it's nothing particularly
special.

The only on-disc extra is a bit of behind-the-scenes footage of their
recording process, but the real highlight here is the copy of their 2012 We
Come in Piece album as a separate CD, which is quite good in its own right.
That's the kind of added value I can get behind.

This is some pretty standard stuff here, but the inclusion of the CD ensures
that fans of D.O.A. and hardcore punk in general get a great deal with in the
purchase of D.O.A. To Hell and Back. They've still got it and, for all
the punks out there, this is well recommended.